Background edit
New articles that are written by COI/Paid editors are a problem. We all know this. We also lack good tools to deal with them.
In a lot of cases, the content is so promotional that it can just be G11ed. In many cases the topic is not notable and can just be sent to AfD. These are not problematic as they have existing solutions within policy.
The problem is when someone writes an article that is only mostly promotional, and where a WP:BEFORE search reveals the topic to be notable. Mildly promotional articles on minor celebrities and companies often fit this category. In such cases, reviewers often use draftification as a 'hopeful' solution. I say "hopeful" because the solution fails in implementation if the author decides to re-create the article in mainspace, or otherwise move it back to mainspace (WP:DRAFTIFY lists COI editing as a reason to move it to draft, but also says not to repeatedly draftify articles, and to list at AfD instead if moved back to main or re-created; the problem is that AfD often doesn't work here because the topic may be clearly notable and WP:Deletion is not cleanup).
In cases like this, the best solution for new page patrollers is something I call 'stubification'. Which basically amounts to WP:TNTing the article; cutting it down to a couple of factual and neutral sentences, a couple sources, and not much else. This allows the article to develop naturally from there. I accept that it is a bit more effort than is required for reviewing most other articles (New Page Patrol is meant to be triage, not cleanup) but I think that there isn't much choice when it comes to many notable but promotional articles. The main issue currently with this approach is that it is a bit difficult to explain this to new users without a policy page to reference when telling them why you removed most/all of the content of their article and replaced it with a stub.
Because of this, I suggest that we add a section to the COI guideline, as below.
Suggested addition to Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest:
Stubify notable but promotional articles edit
Articles written by editors with a conflict of interest often have severe issues. They may be heavily biased, full of original research, self-published or primary sources, press releases used in place of reliable sources, or contain so much promotional material that little else remains. If the article is exclusively promotional, it may be tagged for deletion per the G11 speedy deletion criteria.
In many cases it may be clear that the topic is notable, but significant effort would be required to clean up the article. The writing may so biased that it would need to be copy-edited line by line throughout the article. Reliable sources may be used but the text they are referencing may not be neutral in summarising the content of those sources. Sometimes a multitude of poor or inappropriate references can obscure the few useful ones. The effort required to resolve issues like this can be daunting, and in these cases it can be easier start over from scratch.
Where new articles on a notable topic are promotional or otherwise problematic (as described above), where it is clear that the author has a significant conflict of interest and/or has engaged in paid editing, and little is left that is worth salvaging, the following steps are recommended:
- Remove the content of the article and replace it with one or more neutral and factual sentences describing the subject. Content can be salvaged from the existing article, but rewriting from scratch is preferable.
- Add two or more reliable sources that are independent of the subject and discuss the subject with significant coverage. Sources can be re-purposed from the article, but need to be checked thoroughly. Add a references section and
{{reflist}}template, or retain that section if already present. - An infobox can be retained if the content within it is neutral and concise.
- Add a stub tag to the article.
- Notify the author of the article of the COI editing guideline and tell them that you have reverted the article to a neutral stub.
- If the author reverts your change, report the article at the conflict of interest noticeboard so that other editors can chose between the two versions of the article.
Feedback edit
Feedback is requested. Please add any comments here. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)(click me!) 17:31, 4 March 2020 (UTC)